Operation Free MacArthur Park.
300 Federal Officers. 18 Arrests. 40 Pounds of Fentanyl. The Feds Took Back the Park.
Wednesday, May 6, 2026, pre-dawn. More than 300 federal and local officers moved on MacArthur Park, the Westlake-area public space that the federal criminal complaint calls a “notorious open-air drug market” claimed by the 18th Street gang and frequented by MS-13on the park's south side. The takedown — Operation Free MacArthur Park— was led by the DEA Los Angeles Field Division in coordination with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California, the Southern California Drug Task Force, and the Los Angeles Police Department. 25 defendants were charged in a federal criminal complaint; 18 arrested on day one. At a Calabasas residence belonging to the alleged top trafficker, agents recovered ~40 pounds (19 kilograms)of fentanyl — with a wholesale value of $8–10 million. DEA officials said the operation was also “cleaning up the community” ahead of the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics.
- 300+officersFederal + local — DEA, SCDTF, LAPD, U.S. Attorney CDCA
- 18arrested25 defendants total in federal complaint — pre-dawn raids across LA, Calabasas, San Gabriel
- 40 lbsfentanyl19 kilograms — single-residence seizure — $8-10M wholesale value
- 45 dayssurveillanceDEA had been watching the park for ~45 days before takedown
Federal agents had been surveilling the park for roughly 45 days before the takedown. The federal criminal complaint, filed in the Central District of California, alleges members of the 18th Street gang controlled the park as an open-air retail market for fentanyl and methamphetamine, with product sold from tents and disputes settled through violence and extortion. Bill Essayli, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for CDCA, and Anthony Chrysanthis, DEA Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge, led the public announcement.
Named in the complaint: Mallaly Moreno-Lopez, 31 (Los Angeles); Jackson Tarfur, 28 (Los Angeles); Yolanda Iriarte-Avila, 40; Jesus Morales-Landel, 33; plus 21 additional defendants. The alleged top trafficker — the source of the 40-pound Calabasas fentanyl seizure — faces a potential life sentence if convicted.
All defendants are presumed innocent in federal court until proven guilty.
MacArthur Park is in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, two miles west of downtown. It is in Los Angeles City Council District 1, currently represented by Eunisses Hernandez (D), who unseated longtime incumbent Gil Cedillo in 2022 on a criminal-justice-reform platform. The park sits inside the city governed by Mayor Karen Bass (D), with public safety primarily under the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman (elected 2024 on a public-safety platform after defeating progressive incumbent George Gascón). State-level oversight: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Attorney General Rob Bonta (D-CA).
“As we work to change MacArthur Park so that it's safe and clean for families, we have zero tolerance for people who deal deadly drugs and prey on the community.”
Mayor Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) · Statement on Operation Free MacArthur Park · May 6, 2026
That the takedown required federalresources rather than city-level enforcement is the political fact pattern. MacArthur Park has been a documented open-air drug market for years. The 18th Street gang's claim on the park's northern half is not new information; KTLA, ABC7, and NBC4 have run on-camera packages from inside the market in 2023, 2024, and 2025. The DEA's 45-day surveillance window predated the World Cup deadline that the agency cited as one justification for the operation.
The civic-accountability frame is straightforward. A public park in the second-largest city in the United States operated as an open-air retail fentanyl market for years, under city, county, and state leadership entirely held by Democratic officeholders. The clean-up came when federal officers from a DEA division and a U.S. Attorney's office — under an administration the city's elected officials largely oppose — arrived to do the work. 40 pounds of fentanyl is a number measured in lethal doses by the hundreds of thousands. The DEA's rule-of-thumb lethal dose for fentanyl is two milligrams; 18 kilograms is roughly nine million potential lethal doses. That was sitting in a single Calabasas residence, allegedly destined for one Los Angeles park.
The DEA, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California, and the Southern California Drug Task Force did in one pre-dawn morning what the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Police Department under Mayor Karen Bass, and Council District 1 had not done in years. 25 defendants. 40 pounds of fentanyl. Eighteen-thousand-plus potential lethal doses sitting in a suburban house. MacArthur Park is being cleaned for a World Cup. Until that deadline showed up on the calendar, it ran as a market. The federal complaint is on file. The gang attribution is on the record.